“You’re kidding.” He seemed genuinely surprised. “Does someone have it out for him?”
“I’m not sure. We’ll have to ask if anyone comes to mind.” She paused. “How was meeting with a friend of the family yesterday?” she asked carefully.
“Tedious,” he said. His face remained blank.
She continued to scan the list and decided to push her luck. “Where did you go?” she asked.
But he merely smiled at her. “I got an address for Penelope up in Chicago,” he said. “A friend of a friend tracked it down.”
“That’s good,” she said. She smiled weakly back. “A telephone number would be even better. I’d love to talk with her in real time.”
“I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, did you know that President Roosevelt is coming to town? It’s my last contractual event that my father expects me to attend at the fair. It’s supposed to be at least two hours of a banquet followed by dancing.”
“Sounds like your own personal hell,” Grace said. He had changed the subject first about his outing yesterday and then about Penelope, and she hadn’t neglected to notice.
“And no one appreciates my suffering more than you,” Theo said. He swallowed, his throat bobbing. “Would you care to go with me?”
“You do make a convincing argument,” she said.
“So is that a yes?” he asked.
But she merely smiled, arched her eyebrow, and stood.
Lord knows he was making her wonder about all kinds of things. At least he could wonder a bit now, too.
She walked back to the studio and locked the door behind her, sneaking one last look over her shoulder at him.
Because all his arguments were so smooth and convincing, and that meant she was starting to suspect him all the more.
Grace pored over the list in the studio, making notes until hunger began to gnaw at her.
They still didn’t know who Harriet had met with at the restaurant that night. That, along with the multiple threats for her to stop looking into that part of the case, still made her think that it was Harriet who was being targeted, not Earnest.
But none of the names from the list jumped out at her. Lillie and Oliver would know more about them than she would.
She could ignore her hunger no longer. She locked the door behind her and walked to the diner she had eaten at with Theo a few blocks away from the studio. She ordered the same thing, and then her gaze fell on an abandoned newspaper someone had left on the diner’s counter.
She stood and took it for herself, opening it across the table to read as she ate.
When she turned the fold, she gasped.
MAN FOUND DEAD IN THE MISSISSIPPI, the paper said.
Sylvestor Watson, age 30 years, was found floating in the Mississippi River early this morning. The victim was found with blunt force trauma to the head. The cause of death was drowning.
It is unclear whether he sustained the injury from a fall or if it was the result of foul play.
Beneath the article there was an image of his face. She recognized him immediately.
Her stomach turned. She delicately sat her spoon down on the table.
It was the man who had robbed them.
She looked for a waiter so she could ask for the bill. There were two people she wanted to talk to about this development, as soon as possible.
The first was her cousin Oliver, and the second was the newspaper man Sam Whitcomb.
She folded her napkin.
